Police guard the scene at a house on William Ave, Manurewa, where 10-month-old Poseidyn Pickering died in September 2020. Photo / Dean Purcell
Police guard the scene at a house on William Ave, Manurewa, where 10-month-old Poseidyn Pickering died in September 2020. Photo / Dean Purcell
From the moment she saw baby Poseidyn's head scans, Starship Hospital paediatric intensive care doctor Fiona Miles knew the 10-month-old's chances of survival were slim.
Nevertheless, she told jurors today at the murder trial for the child's father, surgeons rushed to reduce the swelling in the baby's brain and she spent the night by his side hoping her assessment was wrong.
It wasn't. The next morning Poseidyn was declared brain dead - his parents given an opportunity to hold the unresponsive child one last time after life-support devices were removed.
Anthony Pickering, 32, who goes by middle name Simon, has been on trial for three weeks now concerning the September 5, 2020, head injury to son Poseidyn Hemopo-Pickering inside the single bedroom the family-of-four shared in Manurewa, South Auckland.
Dr Miles recalled talking to the defendant and the child's mum soon after Poseidyn was urgently transferred via ambulance from Middlemore Hospital to Starship, where he was taken directly into neurosurgery in an effort to relieve "pressure cooker"-like swelling inside his skull.
The child was already "very unstable" during transport, needing more blood and "strong, turbo-charged drugs" to keep his blood pressure up.
"He told me he heard a bang as Poseidyn hit his head on a window sill... but he said he didn't actively see it because he was watching television," Miles said of her talk with the defendant.
The baby had been playing rough with his 2-year-old sister on the bed prior to the fall and he seemed to be responsive and "fine" a short time after the bump, the doctor also recalled Pickering telling her. The two took a nap together and he woke up to Poseidyn "grunting", at which point he woke up the child's mother and told her to call an ambulance, she testified.
Talking with parents is important so that doctors can get a full picture of the injuries and tailor treatments to the information, she said, adding the she was not talking to the parents as part of the child protection team. So she took them to a small, private room in the ICU to have the talk.
A child's car seat sits the Manurewa driveway where 10-month-old Poseidyn Pickering was injured in 2020. Photo / NZME
"We said we thought he would not survive...but if he did survive it was likely he'd have very severe brain damage," Miles said. "They were crying and seemed very upset."
The father's explanation of his baby's injuries, however, "didn't make sense".
"He would have been deeply unconscious immediately," the doctor said. "This sort of injury has taken significant force.
"The times I've seen that is when someone's been hit with a heavy object like a cricket bat or when someone has picked them up and used them as a cricket bat."
Miles also described seeing straw-coloured blood of mixed density in the CT scan of the child's brain, indicating an older injury that might have happened earlier.
The defence has suggested earlier in the trial that mother Filoi Huakau could be responsible, with accusations she dropped the child on a concrete floor two nights earlier. It was also suggested that the new injury could have been due to an accidental fall from the bed but aggravated by the earlier tumble.
Miles, however, was sceptical.
"The force required to do this is far too great to be caused by a low-level fall," she testified. "It certainly wouldn't cause the degree of injury here.
"An injury like this has taken a very significant force. It would be a very severe car crash. There are very few other times we see this degree of injury."
